Erin Thomas

I’ve often taken satisfaction from the idea that writing, in some ways, is like knitting. Not the following-patterns part, although sometimes in the depths of my writerly frustration, I imagine that would be nice. And it’s not the tangible result, either; a writer goes through many, many iterations before having something tangible to show for her efforts.

No, it’s more the idea of building something big—a scarf, a sweater, a blanket—out of a series of small steps. It’s holding the “whole” in your mind, when all you can see is a pile of yarn, when all you can do in the moment is make one more tiny stitch towards that whole.

Word by word, or bird by bird if you’re an Anne Lamott fan. Stitch by stitch.

I work away at my shawl; one stitch is almost nothing. It’s a word, a period. An entire row of stitches, maybe that’s something. There’s a sense of completion there. A paragraph, or maybe even a scene. But it takes so many, many rows to make a shawl.

Writers work in “the end” and “the now”

Building a novel, or a draft of a novel, feels a bit like that. You have to split your mind; part of it imagines the finished product, holds the shape of it before you. This, it says. This is the reason you’re working. This is what you’re making. But that finish line is a long way away, so another part of your mind focuses only on the task at hand, the small piece you’re doing just now. The stitch, the row, the bit of lace. The next twist of the cable.

Maybe you go so far as to admire how it connects to what came before, how the project is growing. What you cannot do is focus on how much there is still to do. That way lies discouragement. In knitting, as in writing, it pays to have something of a zen mindset. Your work is the work of the moment.

Sometimes, though, there’s a mistake. Sometimes there’s a mistake so big, so early in the project, that you can’t work back and fix it. For a while, maybe, you pretend it’s not there. You pretend no one else will see it. It’s okay. It was near the edge, near the beginning, before the pattern really took shape; maybe you can pretend it happened on purpose.

But it nags at you. After all, you started this because you had a vision. And this object in your hands, it doesn’t match that vision.

You work ahead. Maybe you can fix it. Maybe you can repeat it, somehow, or work in a call-back. You’ve made so many stitches since that point. Good stitches. Stitches that look the way they’re supposed to. You keep going, building on those good stitches. But if the initial flaw is big enough, it will affect the whole. The pattern is broken; the count is off. You could push ahead, you could even finish it, but will you be happy with the finished project?

The fix is usually necessary

Sometimes, the answer is no. Sometimes, the only answer is to start over. So you pull on the yarn and all those lovely stitches unravel, and you rewind the yarn, and your project dissolves back to the mistake or even the starting point, and you begin again.

Knitters have a term for this. It’s called “frogging it,” apparently because “rip it, rip it” sounds like the noise frogs make.I’ve used other f-words from time to time.

I’ve frogged novels, too. When something is wrong that’s fundamental to the story, when it’s built into every scene and chapter and fibre of the novel, sometimes it’s best to start over.

Starting over hurts. You’ve written all those lovely words. Your critique partners have helped you hone them. Some of those chapters sing. Starting over feels like a waste.

What remains is priceless

It’s not a waste. When you frog your knitting, you don’t lose everything. You keep the yarn, the substance out of which the project is made. And you keep the knowledge you gained—the new stitch patterns you learned, the deeper understanding of how the garment comes together. This time, you can do it better. You’re aware of the pitfalls. You can work more easily. Maybe you can even add something that will improve it.

Frogging it isn’t always the answer. Sometimes there will be a way to fix what’s wrong without pulling apart the entire manuscript. But sometimes, sometimes, it’s necessary. And when it is, the best thing you can do is grit your teeth and rip that yarn with courage and commitment, knowing that you’re going to tackle this project again, or even build something better out of the same stuff.

And you begin again. Stitch by stitch.

Erin Thomas writes books for children and young adults (and knits compulsively) from her home in Whitby, Ontario. For more information, visit www.erinthomas.ca.

Today I took a life drawing class, part of a teacher meet-and-greet event at Centennial College. Unlike the gentleman who jokingly stood up and pretended to walk away when the teacher explained that there was no nude model, I was intrigued by the sound of our assignment: we were going to draw an eye.

First Steps

The charcoal felt alarmingly light in my fingers and snapped off at the slightest provocation, but I slowly got the hang of drawing with the side of it, not the tip. Shading. Playing with weight and layers and darkness. The bumps on the easel board under my paper gave an interesting texture, like leaf-and-crayon art.

The eye was a sphere, the teacher explained, and that was where we were to start—just shading a circle. With no real understanding of how the dark blob on my paper was going to turn into an eyeball, I followed her lead. Soon we were covering part of the eye-circle with lines that turned into an eyelid. A lower lid followed. I had lines in the wrong spot; finger-smudging made them paler, but they didn’t quite disappear.

“Don’t try to copy,” the teacher advised. “Just think about the shape of the eye.” But I couldn’t see the sphere of it anymore. The lid seemed to be covering an eye-blob that was a different shape than the eye-blob that was emerging.

Adding More

I made more lines. It didn’t help.

I stepped back, trying to find the beach ball of the greater eye within the drawing. It looked wrong, that was all. Unbalanced. I had drawn the eye of a crazed murderer, a horror-movie clown. And it was staring at me.

I made a line, smudged it out. Tried again, making a bigger mess each time. Eyelashes maybe? No. It turned out that eyelashes were not the answer.

Uncovering

“Good,” the teacher said. Good? Were we looking at the same drawing? Ah. This was teacher good, not real good. I have used this good myself.

“Just clean it up here and here,” she added, and with an eraser she cleaned up some of the leaf-and-crayon-like texture in the eye-white. She showed me that there is usually a space between the iris and the lower lid, and with a quick dodge of her hand, made it appear. She adjusted the shape of the area over the eye, and suddenly it matched what was beneath it.

There all Along

Now I could see the beach-ball roundness, the shape of it, the lines that belonged and the ones that didn’t. It had been there all along; I just couldn’t see the shape of it. Now, I could.

Erin’s Eyeball Art

How often have I done this with a piece of writing? When something’s not working, sometimes our impulse is to keep adding lines. Add another character to supply the missing bit of information, add a plot twist to add excitement. Soon the shape of the story is obscured.

Part of what I love about my writing groups is their ability to see the shape of the eyeball underneath it all, when I can’t. To point out which lines I should erase. How many times will I need to learn the lesson that the right answer to a story problem is usually the one that’s already seeded in the manuscript? Sitting there. Waiting to be seen.

What doesn’t add…

The miracle of the eraser reminds me of my favourite piece of writing advice, one I heard from Kathy Stinson, although she makes no claim to have invented it. “What doesn’t add, subtracts.” And sometimes, it seems, subtracting is a way of adding.

Stories, it seems, have shapes of their own.

Switching between charcoal and eraser, I made an eye. This eyeball art of mine is not going to win any prizes. It was not even the best piece of rookie eyeball art hanging on the wall with all of the other rookie-art eyeballs. But it is arguably the best thing I’ve ever drawn.

I’m going to keep a picture of it handy, to remind me to think about the shape of my story. To remind me, when I’m frustrated and lost in the lines, to be patient—to step back, to try again. The thing I’m drawing with my words might already be there, waiting to be uncovered.

Erin Thomas writes books for children and young adults from her home in Whitby, Ontario. She enjoys trying new hobbies on for size, but promises not to pursue a career in fine art. For more information, visit www.erinthomas.ca.

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